OWS - Lessons in Building a Society

I love Civilization Revolution. Managing resources, having an objective, building your civilization, and - if all goes well - a form of world domination. That is in the nice computerized version of society - it doesn't take into account free loaders, shadow markets, illegal markets and when-people-just-don't-get-along.

Occupy Wall Street is learning some of these lessons.

Recently there has been a spate of people -both homeless and apparently just a little bit off- showing up at Occupy Wall Street, getting a free meal, some clothes and other OWS resources and then, low and behold, not contributing anything. Simultaneously there have been several assaults on occupiers by...other occupiers. One that started as an attempted drug sale, morphed into an assault on three people and days later ended up with a group of thugs threatening to kill the woman who reported the initial assault. There continues to be not enough bathrooms and not enough garbage pickup - both problems that have doomed city growth - though admittedly only when one tries to grow crops instead of receiving donations.

OWS itself had an issue where too much drumming was upsetting the locals an agreement was reached where they would STOP drumming and the people in the drum circle saying they should DRUM more. And they WOULD drum more. Disagreement isn't bad. It is part of life.

These are the growing pains of any society. Usually one of the first dwellings a society builds is a jail. Mostly so the morphing into general anarchy - and there are a few who would love anarchy - thereby necessitating actual rules and consequences.

OWS is handling it about as well as one could expect. They aren't claiming to be some sort of utopia. They aren't even claiming to try and be a city actually. Though in a strange way there are indicative of social media and the new society. Arrive, sit, and THEN figure out what to do.

Really though. You usually don't get to see a small city pop up in a major city and OWS will continue to learn its lessons.

Wayne